Going by official media, the intensity of pledges of allegiance to the president were reminiscent of the 1960s heyday of Mao Zedong. But the Chinese people have grown more mature about political indoctrination.

As Trump teases us with a breakthrough in his US-China trade war talks with Xi Jinping, markets breathe a sigh of relief. But any deal looks unlikely to break down that biggest barrier to China’s digital economy: the Great Firewall

As the Shaanxi scandal over illegal villas shows, even China’s most powerful leader since Mao struggles with a bureaucracy that has spent centuries ignoring central government. After all, “the sky is high and the emperor is far away”.

In 1998, China paved the way to economic lift off with World Trade Organisation talks. In 2008, it beat the Global Financial Crisis. So in 2018, on its 40th anniversary of reform and opening up, it’s at a familiar juncture